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SKETCH MAP OF THE ST. MARY'S RIVER AND ITS VICINITY IN 1763. 



>' 



THE ST. MARY'S RIVER 

A BOUNDARY 



BY 



LAWRENCE SHAW MAYO 

•1 



PRIVATELY PRINTED 
1914 






so COPIES PRINTED, 

OF WHICH THIS IS 



J^O. 



Copyright, igi4, 

by 

L. S. MAYO, 

Cambridge, Massachusetts. 






Introductory. 

How, when, and why did the St. Mary's River — 
that peculiarly serpentine and otherwise inconsequen- 
tial stream — come into our boundary history? Mr. 
Mayo, while gathering materials for a biography of 
Jeffrey Amherst, came across a letter which gives 
this precise bit of information. Believing that this 
will interest other students, I have advised him to 
print it with whatever notes on the subject he may 
have by him. 

Edward Channing. 
Harvard University, 
January, 191 4. 



The St. Mary's River 
A Boundary 



The conspicuous feature of the Treaty of Paris of 
1763 was the aggrandizement of the British Empire 
in North America. By the terms of this instrument 
England retained possession of Canada, Nova Scotia 
and Cape Breton in the north, and of Grenada, the 
Grenadines, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago in the 
south, as the fruits of her war with France. Spain, 
ever the unfortunate tail of the Bourbon kite, joined in 
the Seven Years' War at the eleventh hour and like- 
wise felt the lash of Pitt's genius. To recover pos- 
session of Havana which the English had captured 
in the summer of 1762, his Catholic Majesty ceded 
Florida, which at that time extended from the Atlantic 



Ocean along the Gulf Coast to the lakes near the 
mouth of the Mississippi River. The acquisition of 
these new areas of territory involved the necessity of 
organizing new colonial governments in North Amer- 
ica, a task which naturally fell to the Board of Trade, 
among whose many and varied duties was the over- 
sight of the plantations. Consequently in June, 1763, 
four months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, 
this consultative body submitted a draft of the modus 
Vivendi known as the King's Proclamation of October 

7> 1763. 

The recommendations of the Board in regard to the 
territorial limits of the four new governments to be 
erected were adopted with one exception. The Lords 
of Trade proposed a straight line from the mouth of 
the St. John's River to the junction of the Chattahoo- 
chee and the Flint as the northern boundary of East 
Florida; but the final instrument established a differ- 
ent line of demarcation. The Proclamation bounded 
the new government on the north by the St. Marys 
River from its mouth to its source and thence by a 



line drawn westward to the confluence of the Chatta- 
hoochee and the Flint. As the St. Mary's does not 
appear upon any map of the time and was referred to 
in the London Magazine* as " the anonymous river 
which runs from the West, and enters the Altamaha 
on the south side near its mouth," (which it does not ! ) 
its selection as the Georgia-Florida boundary in pref- 
erence to the line drawn from the mouth of the St. 
John's River must be referred to some reason hitherto 
unstated. The immediate cause was a memorial from 
Colonel James Grant, the first governor of the new 
province, to the Earl of Halifax, "one of His Majesty's 
Principal Secretaries of State t ; " but in order to un- 
derstand the significance of the St. Mary's River as a 
boundary, one must regard this document in its his- 
torical setting — a long-standing dispute between the 
provinces of South Carolina and Georgia. 

By the Second Charter of Carolina, granted to the 
proprietors of that province in 1665, Charles H fixed 

* London Magazine, October, 1763, p. 54ln. 

t Original Correspondence — Secretary of State. C. O. 5. 540 (shelf-mark). 



8 

the southern boundary of the colony at twenty-nine 
degrees of north latitude, ignoring the fact that this 
parallel lay south of the Spanish town of St. Augus- 
tine. There was no recognized international boundary 
between the Spanish and English settlements and the 
natural result was a desultory warfare in the disputed 
wilderness whenever European affairs justified hostili- 
ties in the New World. Consequently George II 
looked with more than ordinary favor upon the scheme 
of Oglethorpe and his associates to establish a colony 
to the southward of the Savannah River. The new 
plantation would afford a place of refuge to the un- 
fortunate debtors and criminals whose wretched con- 
dition had provoked Oglethorpe's interest and sym- 
pathy, and furthermore would act as a barrier between 
the Spaniards at St. Augustine and the planters of 
South Carolina. It also happened that the Caro- 
linians had recently succeeded in changing their com- 
munity from a proprietary to a royal province in 17 19, 
and ten years later the title to Carolina, with the ex- 
ception of Lord Carteret's holding had passed to the 



9 

Crown.* Consequently in 1732, George II was un- 
hampered in granting to the proprietors of Georgia the 
wedge of territory lying between the Savannah and the 
Altamaha, thus giving South Carolina a welcome buffer 
against her enemies, and in doing so a definite south- 
ern boundary. The land south of the Altamaha, if 
English, was henceforth to be the property of the 
Crown, and as such became a bone of contention be- 
tween the Carolinians and the Georgians whenever 
they could afford not to unite against Spanish preten- 
sions to that domain. 

Early in 1755, "one Edmund Grey, a pretended 
Quaker who fled from Justice in Virginia and is a 
person of no property here," according to Governor 
Reynolds,! but who had succeeded in getting himself 
elected a member of the Georgia Assembly, disturbed 
the harmony of that body by a seditious design to with- 

* Lord Carteret, who later became Earl Granville, was one of the eight proprietors 
of the province under the old regime : when the change in government took place Lord 
Carteret gave up his rights of jurisdiction, but unlike his colleagues he retained his title 
to the soil. 

t Jones, Georgia 1 : 486, 



lO 

draw from the House with five conspirators and thus 
disrupt the government. It turned out otherwise than 
Grey intended ; his plot was discovered and he and his 
accomplices were expelled from the Assembly. Dis- 
appointed in his efforts to elevate himself by a Geor- 
gian revolution, the leader of the frustrated movement 
withdrew from the province and settled upon the land 
between the Altamaha and the St. John's. In his new 
environment this early secessionist gathered about him 
an obnoxious gang of criminals, outlaws and debtors, 
forming a colony which became a pest and a nuisance 
to the entire region.* 

This community of squatters attracted the attention 
of three governors, Ellis of Georgia, Lyttelton of South 
Carolina and the Spaniard at St. Augustine. The 
first was concerned for the safety of his own colony 
and wished the region rid of such undesirable neigh- 
bors. The second was interested because the South 
Carolina authorities claimed that the land between the 
Altamaha and the twenty-ninth parallel was a part of 

* Jones, 1 : 486, 487. 



II 



that province, although title to this territory had really 
reverted to the Crown in 1729,— and from their point 
of view Grey and his followers were a band of squatters 
on their domain. The Spanish governor remonstrated 
because he considered Florida to extend at least as far 
to the northward as the Altamaha. The result was 
that Ellis and Lyttelton reported the state of affairs to 
the Board of Trade early in 1758. Ellis, it appears, 
persuaded Grey not to put himself under the pro- 
tection of the Spanish government, as this would help 
Spain in her claim to the disputed territory, and 
gave him a license to settle upon the St. Mary's, a 
place beyond his jurisdiction. For stepping outside 
his proper sphere of activity, Ellis was reproved by the 
Board of Trade,=* and in June, Pitt directed the two 
English governors to order the inhabitants of the un- 
welcome settlement, styled New Hanover, " to remove 
immediately from thence, and to take all due Care that 
no Settlements whatever be made without Leave of 
His Majesty or of those acting under his Authority." f 

* American State Papers — Public Lands, I: 51. 

t Pitt to Lyttelton and Ellis, June 10, 1758 ; Kimball, Pitt Corr. 1 : 270, 271. 



12 

Accordingly Lyttelton and Ellis appointed Commis- 
sioners, Major Henry Hyrne for South Carolina and 
James Edward Powell for Georgia. In February, 1759, 
they went to New Hanover and drove out the settlers.* 
However, the squatters departed only temporarily, for 
according to Governor Wright, they " did only make a 
show or appearance of so doing and immediately re- 
turned back to their settlements where they have con- 
tinued ever since, — a mixture of runagates from the 
two Carolinas, Virginia, etc., etc."t 

The significance of this incident lies in the fact that 
South Carolina claimed the land from the Altamaha to 
the Spanish frontier as a part of her territory. That 
Georgia intended to possess this tract is evident from 
Ellis's letter to Pitt in defense of his grant to 
Grey : — 

"At present the Lands between Georgia and Florida, 
are said to constitute a part of South Carolina, but I 



* Ellis to Pitt, March 1, 1759 ; Ibid., II: 45. 

t American State Papers — Public Lands, 1 : 52. 



13 

am persuaded, Sir, you will readily see the impropriety 
of this State of things, the many inconveniences attend- 
ing it, and may possibly apply some remedy. 

" I humbly apprehend that to settle those Lands as 
far as the River St. Mary (at the entrance of which 
stands Fort William) could give no Umbrage to our 
Neighbours, as the River St. Juan which in these parts 
is considered as the common boundary of the Terri- 
torys of his Majesty and the King of Spain, lies sixty 
Miles Southward of St. Mary's." After reciting the 
fact that Fort William at the mouth of that river was 
still kept up and garrisoned, the Georgia governor beg- 
ged leave " to suggest that if it were the King's 

Pleasure to annex these Southern Lands to this Prov- 
ince either expressly, or in general terms, by extending 
the Jurisdiction of this Government as far as his Maj- 
esty's Territorys extended to the South, the irregulari- 
ties of the Setlers there would be prevented by the 
operation of our Laws." * Thus Georgia quietly made 
her first move against South Carolina in the game for 

* Ellis to Pitt, February 12, 1759 ; Kimball, Pitt Corr. II : 39, 40. 



14 

the possession of the territory south of the Altamaha, 
but before anything further was done in regard to the 
matter both colonies found themselves too much oc- 
cupied with fighting the Cherokee Indians to think of 
their schemes of self-aggrandizement. 

South Carolina, however, did not entirely forget her 
claims to the southern lands. This became apparent 
early in 1763 when news of the preliminary articles of 
peace with Spain was received in America. The report 
that Spain was to cede Florida to Great Britain gave 
the Carolinians the idea that now was their opportunity 
to establish themselves in the region south of the Alta- 
maha. The Cherokee uprising had been effectually 
stamped out by Colonel Grant eighteen months before. 
That danger passed, it was merely a question of whether 
South Carolina or Georgia should first gain possession 
of the disputed territory ; the former claimed it under 
a charter long since revoked, the latter regarded it as 
hers by manifest destiny. In this land-grabbing episode 
the South Carolinians were the first on the ground, — 
at least on paper, — for Thomas Boone, who had re- 



15 

cently been appointed Royal Governor of South Caro- 
lina, rushed in where his predecessors had feared to 
tread and issued to a few speculative spirits large 
grants of land south of the Altamaha. As early as 
April 5, 1763,* Boone had distributed 343,000 acres 
among less than 200 people and apparently the whole- 
sal^ generosity of the Governor was to continue.! For 
Georgia the shoe of 1758 was on the other foot and it 
pinched sorely. Governor Wright, Ellis's successor, 
was awake to the danger and sent a dignified " protest- 
ation and caveat" to his colleague at Charleston. His 
emissary exhibited the document to Boone ; but the 
latter refused either to receive it or to peruse it, and 
the Governor and Council declined to enter the decla- 
ration upon their records. Quite undaunted, Boone 
issued warrants for 160,000 more acres of the terri- 
tory in question.^ 

Wright, having reported this disturbing develop- 
ment to the Secretary of State and to the Board of 

* American State Papers — Public Lands, 1 : 54. t Jones, Georgia, II : 30-33. 

J American State Papers — Public Lands, 1 : 56 ; also Jones, Georgia, II: 32. 



i6 

Trade, could do nothing but wait for the Home Gov- 
ernment to take action. In a long letter to the Board 
of Trade, dated April 20, Wright, besides giving in- 
formation concerning Boone, embraced the opportunity 
to remind that body of " the frequent application from 
this province " for an extension of its southern bound- 
ary, "a thing absolutely necessary for making this 
colony opulent and considerable." The action of his 
brother governor at Charleston he called " the death or 
destruction " of the province and pointed out the differ- 
ence between conferring land upon wealthy Carolinian 
speculators, " who probably will never see it them- 
selves," and properly making grants to " people who 
would really cultivate and improve them." Wright's 
plea was earnest, well written, and calculated to carry 
conviction. 

When this indictment of the Governor of South 
Carolina and the plea for a more extended domain for 
Georgia reached London, the Lords of Trade were in 
the midst of devising arrangements for the administra- 
tion of His Majesty's new possessions in North Amer- 



17 

ica. Wright's suggestion concerning the annexation 
to Georgia of the disputed land evidently arrived at 
the psychological moment, for in a letter of reprimand 
to Boone on May 30, the Board spoke of " those 
measures it may be reasonably supposed His Majesty 
will now pursue to extend the government of Georgia, 
and thereby to remove those obstacles and difficulties 
which that well regulated colony has so frequently and 
justly stated to rise out of the narrow limits to which it 
is confined." * On June 8, the Lords of Trade made 
their recommendation which later became the Royal 
Proclamation of October, 1763. In this representation 
a line drawn from the mouth of the St. John's River 
to the junction of Chattahoochee and the Flint was 
drafted as the northern boundary of East Florida. 
The territory between that line and the Altamaha was 
to be put " under the jurisdiction and within the gov- 
ernment of Georgia." t As yet there was no mention 
of the St. Mary's River as a possible boundary, and 

» American State Papers — Public Lands, 1 : 53 ; also Jones, Georgia, II : 33, 34. 
t Ibid., 1 : 56, 57. 



i8 

Governor Wright must have rejoiced both in the 
present discrediting of his rival and in the prospect 
of so great an increase of his own " well-regulated " 
colony. 

At this juncture another personage appeared upon 
the scene. Colonel Grant, who had fought under 
Forbes before Fort Duquesne and more recently had 
distinguished himself by a vigorous and successful 
campaign against the Cherokees, had been appointed 
Governor of East Florida soon after the Treaty of 
Paris was signed. Before the readjustment of colonial 
boundaries took place, Grant made it his immediate 
business to inquire into everything that concerned the 
state of his new charge. The first thing that presented 
itself to his notice was the proposed northern boundary, 
the line from the mouth of the St. John's to the junc- 
tion of the Chattahoochee and the Flint, which he 
termed " too confined." Accordingly, he addressed a 
memorial to the Earl of Halifax, Secretary of State, 
and in it he stated as follows his reasons for changing 
the intended limits of Florida : — 



19 

" First, Because by this division the most valu- 
able Part of Florida will lose its Name and be 
absorbed by Georgia, whereby that valuable Ac- 
quisition would become invisible to the Eyes of 
the World, and Florida would be considered as an 
inadequate equivalent for the Havana, and remain 
that Barren Broken Sand Bank which it has been 
erroneously deem'd by the uninformed Publick. 

" Secondly, Because this Artificial Boundary 
would be difficult to ascertain in a flat country 
covered with Swamps and full of Woods, which of 
Course would Occasion continual Disputes with 
the Neighboring Provinces. 

" Thirdly, Were it even possible to be defined, 
that Province would be curtailed of the Lands 
which are the most fertile and most capable of 
accomodating Settlers who might in Time con- 
tribute largely to the Support and Defence of that 
Frontier Province, which otherways must always 
continue to be a heavy Burthen upon the Mother 
Country, the Southern Part of it appearing to be 
Nothing but Barren Lands and consequently less 
fit for Settlement and Cultivation than the North- 
ern Part."* 



20 



The argument of the Governor of East Florida is as 
convincing as that of Wright a few months before him, 
but Grant surpassed the other's recommendation by 
proposing a definite boundary of his own selection : — 

"Your Memorialist therefore humbly proposes 
that the River Catahouchee or Flint River may 
continue the Boundary of East Florida, to the 
Westward, and that the River St. Mary's from its 
Entrance to its Source, with a West Line from 
thence to Catahouchee or Flint River may be its 
Boundary to the North which natural Line he 
conceives to be more eligible and distinct than 
any artificial one can be, however mark'd or 
described." * 

Was Grant disinterested in his suggestions or was 
he, like his colleague to the northward, bent purely 
upon enlarging the area allotted to his jurisdiction? 
There is no denying the superiority of a natural water- 
way to an arbitrary straight line as a boundary through 

• Original Correspondence, Secretary of State. C. O. 5, 540. 



21 

a swampy and hummocky wilderness, and the land 
annexed to Florida under the new scheme was so 
inconsiderable in quantity that it seems as if Grant's 
recommendation was chiefly practical rather than self- 
ish. Territorially, the new boundary meant that the 
present county of Nassau and about one-third of Duval 
county should be a part of Florida and not of Georgia ; 
the rest of the narrow strip was either composed of 
swamp land or was so small in extent as to be negli- 
gible. In quality the land between the St. John's 
and the St. Mary's, approximately the area of Nassau 
county, was very desirable. A contemporaneous ac- 
count describes the soil upon the banks of the St. 
Mary's as " the richest in the northern parts of the 
province," and adds that " the abundance of cane 
swamps are a strong indication of the goodness of the 
soil." * Live oaks and cedars of an extraordinary size 
grew in the swamps of this river and these trees were 
as useful for ship-building then as thirty years later, 

* Bartram, Description of East Florida. London, 1774, c. 2. 



22 

when the timbers of the frigate " Constitution " were 
hewn within a few miles of this very region.* The 
remainder of the tract of land in question consisted of 
" plains covered with pines " and afforded *' tolerable 
good grass." South of the St. John's the country was 
" much the same as has just been described, but not 
quite so good." Evidently Governor Grant was well 
informed concerning the nature of his province and 
acted in this case both for ease of administration and 
for the good of the colony. 

Whatever his principal motive may have been, Grant 
accomplished his purpose and prevented Florida's be- 
coming " that Barren Broken Sand Bank " which the 
Lords of Trade had destined it to be. A copy of his 
memorial to the Earl of Halifax was transmitted to the 
Board of Trade on September 1 9, with a request that 
that body take it into its immediate consideration and 
report upon the expediency of the proposed alteration.! 
Their Lordships acted in this matter with a prompti- 

* Hollis, The Frigate Constitution, 48. 

t Original Correspondence, Secretary of State. C. O. 5, 540. 



3477-251 



23 

tude quite unlocked for in the transactions of that over- 
worked body. 

Nine days later the Board of Trade replied to the 
Secretary of State in these words : — 

" Altho' there was a reason to induce the Board to 
propose in their former presentation to His Majesty, 
that the Tract of Country between the Rivers St. Juan 
and St. Mary should be annexed to the Province of 
Georgia. We are nevertheless of the opinion that the 
Considerations of fixing the Limits by a river, which is 
a natural boundary, and that the more southern parts 
of East Florida are represented to be less fertile and 
therefore not so well adapted to Settlement and Cul- 
tivation, do favor Governor Grant's propositions and 
therefore if it be His Majesty's pleasure, we shall 
prepare the draft of the Proclamation and of the 
Governor's Commission .... conformable thereto." * 

On October 7, the Royal Proclamation established 
the St. Mary's River from its mouth to its source, — 

* Original Correspondence, Board of Trade. C. O. 5, 563. 



24 

and thence a straight line to the junction of the Chat- 
tahoochee and the FUnt — as the northern boundary of 
East Florida, and the territory between the Altamaha 
and these limits was annexed to the Province of 
Georgia. In this arrangement the pretensions of 
South Carolina were ignored ; Georgia acquired a much 
needed addition to her constricted domain ; and Florida 
secured a valuable bit of land which she would have 
lost had it not been for the timely and convincing 
argument of Col. James Grant. 

When the question of boundaries for a new nation 
arose in 1782, the American commissioners treating 
for peace with Great Britain insisted on going back to 
the Proclamation of 1763.* Consequently, the north- 
ern limit of East Florida as determined by that instru- 
ment twenty years before became part of the first 
southern boundary of the new country, and as an inter- 
state division remains to this day as the imprint of the 
first British Governor of East Florida upon the carto- 
graphy of the United States. 

* Cbanning, United States, HI : 358. 




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